


The Infanta

by Exxact



Series: A Tyranny in the Womb [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars: Tarkin - James Luceno
Genre: Animal Death, Asphyxiation, Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Carrion Plateau, Choking, Choking Kink, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional neglect, Eriadu-centric, F/F, Femslash, M/M, Marriage Customs and Rituals, Multi, Non-Force Choking, Rough Sex, Tarkrennic Hatesex, Threesome, Worldbuilding, imperial intrigue, star wars femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-02 02:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exxact/pseuds/Exxact
Summary: There is an ugliness to this woman’s haughtiness, and yet the dignity she exudes sends a short, sure bolt of knowledge and uncertainty alike through Jyn.  Against every animal instinct flooding her veins, she walks towards her, the length of her stride shorted by the woman’s startled frown that quickly smoothes itself into pleasure.“Hello,” Jyn begins childishly. “I don’t think we’ve met before.  I’m Jyn Erso.”“And so you are,” the woman says.  Her voice is low, nearly throaty.  “I’d quite expected you to be more intoxicated and less polished.  What a delightful surprise.”Two Ersos are captured alive on Lah'mu.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content note: Please heed the tags. This fic features the emotional and verbal abuse of a guardian (Krennic) towards his ward (Jyn), as well as descriptions of Jyn’s emotional neglect. 
> 
> Having said that, this fic features no sexual abuse of either adult or underage characters and the smut is entirely consensual. Galennic dubcon is implied in Chapter 2, but nothing graphic is included. 
> 
> This verse’s main relationship—Jyn and Rivoche’s love story—is very much meant to be positive, with the two characters moving past the emotional manipulation they’ve suffered through together. The next chapters—and especially the next installment—of this verse will continue to highlight this. 
> 
> Other notes:  
> -My face cast for Rivoche is Ruth Negga with blue eyes. She’s biracial in this verse.  
> -Rivoche’s personality and storyline is a bricolage of her EU character, my own concept work, and endless headcanons with Baethoven, whose patience and amazing ideas are truly endless.  
> -Rivoche is two years older than Jyn, making her 21 at the time they meet. Graduating from secondary Academy courses is comparable to graduating college in this verse, while Jyn’s education has been more generalized in the way a high school education would be, despite her Imperial Studies certificate.  
> -The Octave Stairway as Jyn’s favorite Wizard of Oz-style holodrama is canon thanks to Catalyst!  
> As always, thank you to @baethoven for the beta!

“Jyn, come here.”

 

Jyn will always remember the scene fading in alongside her father’s voice, Mama’s presence swimming behind tears, as though she were already lost to her.

 

“I love you, Stardust,” Papa gasps, his breath ragged against her shoulder. “And if he captures you, do as he says. Don’t disobey him.”

 

“Don’t you dare tell her that!” Mama shouts, bright and alive now that Jyn has allowed herself to cry. “He’s a monster and she will not be one of his hostages. Saw will come for her.”

 

“She’ll be killed if she resists him.”

 

Jyn has never heard her papa’s voice so distant, so feral. She tries to scramble away from his grip, held fast by his reluctance to let her down. Finally, once he does, Papa’s eyes meet with hers in a way that they rarely do with anyone’s.

 

“Listen to me. Everything I do—everything that your mother and I do—we do to protect you. Say you understand.”

 

“I understand.”

 

Jyn lets her mother slip her rucksack on, takes her hand while she’s guiding her outside.

 

“Jyn,” Mama says, slipping her necklace over Jyn’s head before kissing both of her cheeks. “You know where to go, don't you? Trust the Force.”

 

Jyn takes off, making it only a few steps before the ground is unsteady beneath her feet, rumbling with foreboding. The ship has landed, she realizes, urging herself forward without result. She can’t leave her parents, can’t abandon the two people she loves most in the galaxy to the horror of something that angers her father and makes her mother’s voice so harsh. The rush of need she feels for them overwhelms her fear of a white-clad man beside black-and-steel versions of Stormie, and so she turns, running furiously back towards where they stand before Krennic, slamming herself against her mother’s shuddering legs.

 

Mama’s voice is a growl, her posture as tense as though Jyn weren’t attached to her, crying into her skirt. “You will never win.”

 

“Do it,” an uncomfortably familiar voice orders, and then everything around her is chaos, drowned out by her her father’s bellowing sob.

 

“Mama!” Jyn screams alongside him, unable to comprehend how her mother has suddenly come to rest beside her in the grass.

 

“Lyra, Stardust, no!”

 

“You find the right moment, darling,” Mama gasps, clutching one of Jyn’s braids hard enough to hurt. “You find the right moment and you run from him. From all of them.”

 

Jyn looks up briefly, catching only a flash of Krennic clutching his shoulder in agony before ducking her head back against her mother’s chest.

 

“Get the child off of her,” he orders one of the troopers. “You two, search the premises for anything of interest. Meet us back at the shuttle. Make it quick.”

 

“No!” Jyn wails, kicking against her captor’s shins to no avail.

 

Papa’s voice is steady above her, nearly weary. “I’ll go quietly, Krennic. Just give me a moment with her.”

 

Jyn finds herself upon the grass again, Papa’s warm, solid body blocking her from seeing Mama’s broken figure as he takes her into his arms once again.

 

“Stardust, I need you to listen to me. Krennic will not hesitate to harm you as well should you go against him. Be docile and obey him in all things. We will endure this.”

 

“Carry the girl to the shuttle.”

 

A garbled ugliness sounds against Jyn’s back, and though she whimpers as the trooper tugs her away from Papa and lifts her over his shoulder, she does not cry.

 

“Let me hold my child. Orson! Orson!” she hears Papa shout bitterly, brokenly. “She’s just lost her mother!”

 

“You killed her!” Jyn shrieks at the flurry of white that is slowly rusting with blood.

 

Papa strides after her, though he’s quickly wrestled to the ground by two more troopers, who carry him just as effortlessly onto the ship while Krennic follows.

 

“Sit her between the two of you and strap him down while I sedate him,” Krennic orders, ignoring Jyn’s frantic thrashing. “We’ll send reconnaissance for the other two.”

 

Jyn stares helplessly as Papa is secured into the compartment across from her, his shirt and tunic ripped down to expose his bicep, which Krennic swabs with a bacta patch. Despite his swirling cape and squadron of guards, there’s a weakness to his jaw, a vulnerability to the set of his mouth. She’s unimpressed by him, she realizes proudly.

 

“Don’t panic, Stardust,” Papa gasps, staring at her intently as the needle penetrates his skin, Krennic hissing in pain with the pressure of using his injured arm to inject him. His eyes grow wide, as though drinking up as much of her image as he can in his final moments of consciousness.

 

“I promise that we’ll see one another again, my love. Wait for me.”

 

Jyn feels the shudder of the ship’s takeoff beneath her, surrounding her, and she can no longer hold back her screams. She cries for Mama’s empty husk of a body, for Papa’s figure across and away from her, his face now utterly blank.

 

Krennic shakes his head, falling back against the wall while a med-droid begins to tend to his wound. “You, administer a quarter-dose to the child. Restrain her if you must.”

 

Krennic’s gaze falls upon Papa’s stupor. “Tablet, not injection.”

 

Jyn sticks out her tongue and swallows the offering obediently, if only to keep the trooper’s shadowy fingertips as far away from her as possible. Immediately, a calm permeates her veins, settling her mind into a heavy concentration that allows her to watch the rise and fall of Papa’s chest until she, too, is asleep.

 

 

+

Jyn is a shadow against the dimmed lights of the lower-level girls’s floor, darting past a security droid and slipping out of the garden’s window before her heat signature can register. Her fingertips are slick with sweat, and she knows that it’s likely only through luck that she’s able to scramble her way up two stories before collapsing against the parapet.

 

This is the third time she’s managed to extricate herself from her bunk deep in the night, escaping the confines of the Royal Imperial Academy without any true intent to leave it behind come morning. No, this solitude is only a futile respite from the invisible, blandly obedient girl she’s forced herself to become.

 

Jyn takes deep, shuddering breaths, looking out over the military sector’s training fields, witnessed only by the stars above her, by the familiar fruits and flowers within the gardens many levels below her bare, trembling feet. There’s a breeze this high above the planet’s core, whipping through her hair and chilling her just as the sea breezes on Lah’mu had. She attempts to tuck it behind her ears, brushing her fingers against the bristling hairs that fall to her chin. She hates the style, hates it even more since Krennic had insisted on having it chemically straightened every week to preserve it’s shape. It reminds her too much of the sharp contours of Vader’s helmet where they curve against his mask, mechanical, artificial.

 

Jyn is unable to deny her reality in any capacity: she belongs to Krennic. Why, he probably often wishes Vader were his ward instead of her, considering the blatant need to cause hurt in his eyes when she receives perfect marks and wordlessly accepts his decision to keep her in the Imperial Studies program. The thought gives Jyn little satisfaction, however, when she remembers that it’s been six years since she’s seen Papa despite following his last instructions to the letter. Six years with Mama dead and Papa gone, and yet she often finds herself grieving more for him, trapped in circumstance by the same man whose legal guardianship is little different from Papa’s veiled imprisonment.

 

 _Vader wouldn’t be held by a petty, greedy man like Krennic in the way I allow myself to be,_ Jyn thinks viciously. _He would possess the courage to break his chains like Mama would tell me to do_.

 

Jyn’s eyes fill with tears at her own self-pity, at how her thoughts have come to align so closely with the doctrine she’s spent six years ingesting. She’s romanticizing Vader, just like stupid Myg does when she sighs endlessly over Tarkin, contorting him into an image of herself instead of the monster her mother would discuss in hushed tones late at night, a comlink hidden within her sleeve.

 

Mama would want her to escape, she knows, to shimmy back down to her bunk, to alter her uniform and mask her face, to steal a shuttle and fly to the Unknown Regions and marry a pretty girl who would fall asleep under the stars every night with her.

 

She listens to the warm rumble of her Papa’s voice instead.

 

“ _Go back to sleep, Stardust_ ,” he tells her, and suddenly the pain of his absence is too great to bear. Jyn sobs bitterly into her forearm, groping underneath her collar for her necklace. She clutches the crystal tightly enough in her palm to break the skin, drops of blood smearing along its surface.  Her breath stammers while she remembers a time when this necklace had still been her mother’s, when she would thieve it away, tucking it onto the pillow beside her in bed. She gasps against the memory of drawing Brin and the Octave Stairway, of her papa’s face imposed on the terrified boy.

 

_“Eight levels,’ Brin said. “And on each we need to find a different piece of magic before we can return home.”_

 

“Not yet, Mama,” she breathes into her stinging palm, her eyelashes crushed against her fingertips, desperate to linger away from her captivity for just a moment longer.

 

  
+

The graduation ceremony does not linger in Jyn’s mind, the encouraging lies of the Emperor on the holoscreen fading from memory, the smiles from cruel classmates ignored as she accepts her certificate. Instead, it is the the physical sensations that endure; the desire to recoil as Krennic’s hand guides her back into that horrible shuttle, the thick sourness of the wine he coerces her into accepting once they’ve arrived at his apartment. Most of all, however, it is the absence of her father, bitter in her bones, that spreads throughout her body with a sullen ache.

 

 _Papa hasn’t abandoned me_ , she tells herself, allowing Krennic to seat her beside him on the great room’s lounge. _And I won’t abandon him_.

 

“Your father was far too busy to join us today, though he sends his highest regards.”

 

“I understand,” Jyn replies evenly. I _understand that you are purposefully keeping him from me_.

 

Krennic smiles, the twitch of his lips cynical. “Well, you must be quite excited, finishing your schooling at nineteen. I had a much more exacting go of it, what with my double studies in Engineering and Architecture. You should consider yourself quite fortunate that the Imperial Studies program doesn’t require upper-level Academy work in order to graduate.”

 

Jyn frowns. “I wouldn’t have minded continuing on at the Academy. Or studying something more rigorous,” she adds pointedly.

 

Krennic waves away her irritation with a cavalier smile. “You’d grow tired of both quickly, just as Galen did. Drop off the face of society and work for a company far beneath you, calling your idleness ‘curiosity’. Foolish.”

 

Jyn grits her teeth, forcing herself to submit to Krennic’s ego, allowing him to continue.

 

“No, you’ll be aching to lead your own life far from the restrictions of the Academy’s schedule, though I insist that you stay in my apartments for the time being. I’ll tell you now, though, that I won’t have a string of men sniffing around here. As your guardian in your father’s absence, I require intention in such matters.”

 

 _He’s not attempting this._ Jyn heaves, her breath catching in an unsteady pant. _He can’t just decide to marry me off as though he were transferring an underling from one commanding officer to another._

 

“ _Of course he can_ ,” an approximation of her mother’s voice tells her, nearly mockingly in it’s anger. _“And yet you chose to stay knowing as much, just as your father would have.”_

 

Jyn feels the sting of tears building against her lashes. She stares at the pristine carpet beneath her feet, the white angularity that permeates the room’s design, the sterile life that her cowardice has trapped her in.

 

“Silence won’t save you,” Krennic coos. “Has there already been a suitor or two, some little Academy secrets?” he asks, his voice dripping with presumed accuracy.

 

“No,” Jyn huffs, taking a deep pull of her wine in an attempt to keep her composure.

 

“Who will be the lucky lad, then, I wonder?” Krennic muses, apparently content to keep the subject alive. “A strapping Core Worlds lieutenant like I once was myself? Or perhaps a bold, sharp-jawed cadet like the Veers boy?”

 

“I don’t want an officer’s son,” Jyn’s voice is steady, her mother’s final words to her bright in her mind. “I don’t want to spread my legs for a man and I certainly I don’t want to marry one.”

 

“Unexpected, though hardly a concern,” Krennic replies with an unctuous smile, ignoring her vulgarity. “Surely you know that the Empire favors marriage between any pairing of humans. Moff Mors and her wife, to give just one example. You’ll meet them tomorrow evening, in fact.”

 

Jyn allows her frustration to pour out of her, unable to bear Krennic’s smugness. “Nobody would want me, regardless of that! All the girls at the Academy hated me!” _Because their parents hate you and see you for the grasping creature you are_ , she doesn’t add with great difficulty.

 

“Oh, Jyn,” Krennic sighs, swirling the dregs of his glass before swallowing quickly. “Such dramatics, just like your mother. Of course you’ll be desired. You’re beautiful to many, not to mention very well-connected to the heights of Imperial power. Insecurity doesn’t suit you.”

 

Krennic leans forward, his eyes biting into hers so viciously that she cannot stop herself from sobbing.

 

“If this tantrum is simply your self-consciousness put forth, then I assure you it has been a waste of our time.”

  
  
Jyn shudders, cowering against the back of the lounge. She spends long minutes crying into the black velvet of her graduation robe, her legs tucked up under her as though she were protecting every part of her from Krennic.

 

“Oh, no more tears from those pretty eyes,” he tuts, tapping her chin. “Smiles only tomorrow night, and from now on. You’ll begin to receive offers, and you and I will carefully choose the best lady of the lot before the season ends. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

 

Jyn is overcome, the urge to cry leaving her as suddenly as Krennic’s spite has. She nods numbly, patting Krennic’s shoulder with the minute deference she can summon.

 

“You’ll make your father and I proud, Jyn,” he finishes, ignoring her touch and rising to stare out the window at the flurry of traffic, effectively dismissing her.

 

 

+

The stars rise far too quickly outside of Jyn’s window the next evening, blurred by the harsh lights of her vanity but present nonetheless as she allows a cosmetic droid to cake her face with a series of creams, another glossing her hair with perfumed oil behind her. She’s already dressed in her silk gown—a plain, creamy white doubtlessly intended to call attention to Krennic’s ensemble rather than her own whilst still complementing it in color.

 

Jyn has never attended the palace’s Empire Day ball before, had never been discharged from the Academy the evening before by Krennic and returned the morning after with stories of stolen drinks and priceless decor.

 

 _That was before I was useful to him_ , Jyn thinks coldly, snapping the strap of her slipper closed beneath her knee, patting her dangling kyber crystal rigged against it. _Before he could begin attempting to marry me off to some simpering heiress or rugged military daughter._

 

Despite the delay her smuggling has caused them in leaving, Jyn faces no retribution. She seats herself in the city speeder Krennic has purchased for the occasion, the lights whipping past them until Jyn is nearly nauseous. Krennic never once looks over at her, as though happy to pretend she had been left behind in the apartment. It suits Jyn well enough, though she finds the gravity of his silence almost more unsettling than his rage or forced politeness.

 

“You’re never to remain at the table we’re seated at or approach me unless you are in need of my guards. Let me know you understand,” he hisses into Jyn’s ear when they arrive in the line of traffic. Once she nods, Krennic pulls them both forward into the flashes of holocams outside of the speeder, slamming the auto controls into valet mode.

 

“Now, let’s go mingle, my dear!” he shouts, unsettlingly jovial and commanding all at once.

 

They’re shown to a table on a platform directly beneath that of the Imperial higher command’s, though Krennic appears to ignore the obvious slight, immediately walking onto it. Jyn watches dully as he edges himself ever closer to Grand Moff Tarkin, who is speaking to Colonel Yularen, his gaze tight upon the mingling crowd where Jyn begins to wander, uncertain of where she should position herself. She chooses a position upon their table’s level near a service bar, relatively unpopulated now that many couples have begun taking to the dance floor, uncertain of what exactly she wishes to happen next.

 

Jyn hides her sigh behind a glass of wine, looking up and over once more at Tarkin. She follows his gaze, feeling a roiling disgust inside her once she realizes that his target can’t be more than a few years older than her. She waves at him, a rosy silhouette from this distance, but Tarkin’s indulgent smirk is all too clear.

 

 _They’re sick, the lot of them_ , she thinks. _How could power or renown or the pearl ring decorating her index finger be worth the misery of such company_?

 

The woman has walked past Tarkin now, stepping down onto Jyn’s platform. She glides as though she were as secure here in her belonging here as the Emperor himself, the red of her gown bright and alive without a trace of garishness. Her shoulders are strong beneath the draping of her caplet, emphasizing the sharp, elegant curves of her breasts and waist, her hair denser and darker than Jyn’s, curled and braided into a coronet.

 

As she draws closer, Jyn is finally able to see her face, finding it to be composed of an uncommon yet striking set of features. Her skin is cool-toned beneath its natural depth, sallow veins drawn out by the sudden blue of her eyes against it. The weight of her rounded jaw pulls oddly against her high, sharp cheekbones, yet manages to perfectly offset her narrowed eyes. Her nose is similarly small and plump, resting above a full, disapproving mouth.

 

There is an ugliness to this woman’s haughtiness, and yet the dignity she exudes sends a short, sure bolt of knowledge and uncertainty alike through Jyn. Against every animal instinct flooding her veins, she walks towards her, the length of her stride shorted by the woman’s startled frown that quickly smooths itself into pleasure.

 

“Hello,” Jyn begins childishly. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Jyn Erso.”

 

“And so you are,” the woman says. Her voice is low, nearly throaty. “I’d quite expected you to be more intoxicated and less polished. What a delightful surprise.”

 

Jyn cannot think of a proper retort. The compliment is flippant and yet stunning coming from her lips, now quirked pleasantly upwards.

 

“I’m Rivoche Tarkin,” she adds, quite obviously pleased that she has struck Jyn into silence. “His niece,” she finishes, her lip curling in acknowledgement of what must be a frequent assumption.

 

“I didn’t know—“

 

Jyn finds herself interrupted by a high whistle that overtakes the sounds of mingling. It grows closer to them, only ceasing once its source is revealed to be a red R2 unit that comes to rest against Rivoche’s side. Rivoche smiles a genuine smile down at it, offering Jyn no explanation as to why an astromech droid is now zooming its way back and forth in irritated little circles next to her.

 

“Did Uncle Wilhuff try to lock you in the shuttle again?”

 

The droid replies with a string of chirps, nudging Rivoche’s thigh with its shiny dome.

 

“Oh, how rude of me. This is R2-R5. Just call her R5.”

 

“I’m Jyn. Jyn Erso,” Jyn tells her, receiving a whirl that sounds mildly threatening. “You two match,” Jyn adds blankly, swallowing around the questions bubbling within her.

 

Rivoche sniffs, her brow raising in a perfect, disdainful replica of her uncle’s, though Jyn senses little of her former ire in it. If Rivoche didn’t find her worthy of her attention, Jyn now knows that she would have left without another word.

 

“Boldness and a little wit, though clearly neither was taught to you by Krennic. Where did you attend school?”

 

Jyn stifles an embarrassed pout. “The civilian branch of the Royal Imperial Academy.”

 

Rivoche nods. If she knows of its reputation, she is masking it with an expression as rigid as her uncle’s when Jyn catches his eye across the room, noticing with mild horror that Krennic has managed to appear at his side.

 

“I attended the Pleiade Academy on Claer. I graduated from my uppers a week ago, in fact.”

 

“Congratulations,” Jyn says without enthusiasm, belatedly hoping that her voice won’t reveal her envy at Rivoche’s superior education or her bitterness towards Krennic’s control of her future.

 

“What did you study?” she asks when it appears that Rivoche’s attention is wavering back towards R5, who appears to have settled considerably. It is a question borne of genuine curiosity, though Jyn thinks that she would have asked anything just to keep Rivoche’s attention, to keep herself privy to that low, elegant purr and far away from Krennic, now only several yards away from them.

 

“Politics, of course,” she replies, the familiar cold pride of her uncle’s visage reappearing. I’ve always known that I wanted to act as either the Lieutenant Governor or a diplomat in the Imperial Senate for Eriadu. Perhaps I’ll even do some good in the galaxy.”

 

“And you,” Rivoche’s eyes are sharp against Jyn’s downcast gaze. “Which subject caught your eye?”

 

“Imperial Studies,” Jyn mutters, unable and unwilling to hide the resentment rich in her tone.

 

Rivoche frowns, her eyes darting towards her uncle’s table. “Rather different from your father’s line of work. You must take after your mother.”

 

“It wasn’t my choice,” Jyn says boldly, desperation edging into anger at Rivoche, at Krennic, at herself. “I wanted to be an engineer like him.”

 

“Of course, Director Krennic couldn’t bear to have a ward who may be assumed to possess any accomplishments to rival his within his own line of work.”

 

Rivoche’s grip tightens around her glass, her brow falling in something resembling sympathy.

 

“I’m certain that you’d have made your father proud. And perhaps still will.”

 

The words are as close to sincere kindness as anything Jyn has heard since Lah’mu. She finds herself gasping quietly against forming tears as she struggles to maintain her composure, Rivoche’s expression abruptly hardening as she collects herself.

 

“Pardon me for leaving on such a tender note, but it appears that I’m being summoned,” she says with an offhanded smile, gently gliding her fingertips against Jyn’s collarbone, tracing outwards towards her shoulder straps before she turns away. “Stay right where you are.”

 

R5’s domed head swivels to catch one last look at Jyn before following her, using her altitude jets to rise between platforms, scorching the stone in the process.

 

Jyn blinks several times in rapid succession, unable to even bring herself to wince at Krennic’s approaching figure. She is watching as Rivoche rejoins Tarkin, the benevolent expression that Tarkin greets her with, his head turned away from the crowd to hide his smile that truncates into a sneer. She wonders again how someone so radiant and captivating could be the ward of someone so brutally colorless, shaking off the thought when her eyes fall down upon her muted skirts.

 

“That was Rivoche Tarkin,” Krennic’s incredulousness is palpable, his face splitting into a smug grin. “And she looked absolutely _entranced_! Good work, my girl!”

 

Jyn is struck into horror by Krennic’s linkage of Rivoche’s name to that of her uncle’s, by the absurdity and danger of what her impulse has wrought. What would Mama and Papa think of her? Would they think that she was no better than Krennic, attempting to ingratiate herself against Tarkin’s bosom, not seeing the power and grace Rivoche holds away and apart from him? The kyber crystal bites against the flesh of her calf as though it is chastising her.

 

“She’s talking to her uncle,” Krennic whispers behind his glass of brandy. “He’s looking over here now, so eyes on me and away from them.”

 

“Okay,” Jyn murmurs, unwilling to let Rivoche out of her sight in order to be greeted by Krennic’s self-satisfied smirk.

 

“He’s frowning like the dour bastard he is, though he’d blast his own feet off before he’d smile, so it means nothing.” Jyn sees Krennic’s breath hitch in his throat, curiously numb to the range of his emotions that she is bearing witness to.

 

“And now they’re making their way towards us. She’s determined, he’s miserable.” Krennic's posture sharpens considerably as they draw closer. “Go refill our glasses.”

 

Jyn rises obediently, though a brief pause to adjust her slipper allows Rivoche and Tarkin the necessary time to reach their table before her departure would be considered a slight instead of demure courtesy.

 

“Director Krennic,” Rivoche begins without the customary pleasantries, her smile tight, false. “I would like to formally court your ward, Jyn Erso.”

 

Jyn barely escapes Krennic’s insistent hand upon her knee as her mind careens with the thrills of joy and fear and hope. Instead, she remains standing, eye-to-eye with Rivoche’s sparkling, empty expression, noting that R5 is conspicuously absent.

 

Rivoche’s gaze darts against Jyn’s in what she interprets as approval, though her expression quickly returns to the friendly inscrutability of a politician. “I do not require your permission, of course. We Eriadians simply respect the sentiment of tradition.” Behind her, Tarkin nods, a thoughtful hand resting against his chin.

 

Krennic grins, speaking seemingly without having listened to any of Rivoche’s proposition. “Why, Ms. Tarkin, what an unexpected pleasure! It has been so long since I’ve last seen you—several years, I believe…“

 

Rivoche’s smile is directed towards Jyn, teeth smugly bared. “We’ve never met in person before.”

 

Any further chatter fades from Jyn’s mind, her focus narrowing into attempting to absorb Rivoche’s terrifying, tantalizing offer. She wants to shout with all the exuberance she hasn’t had since childhood, to cry with the realization that accepting such a proposition would permit her to touch and kiss Rivoche and be touched and kissed in return. Jyn feels herself shake with the strength of her desire to experience all the potential love she is being offered, though she is stilled quickly by Tarkin’s unnerving, knowing presence.

 

The sight of him breaks apart Jyn’s fantasies, grouping the pieces left into the problems they’re founded upon. Tarkin is responsible for her mother’s death, her father’s imprisonment, her family’s destruction. Though they may have been captured by Krennic in the name of the Emperor, it is Tarkin to whom they are truly enslaved. Unless he were attempting to snare her and Papa ever closer into his control, Jyn cannot imagine why he would allow his niece to offer such a relationship towards her. Mama’s dying scream echoes within Jyn’s mind, her parting words blazed into the heart of the panic building inside Jyn.

 

But, the voice beneath it asks, what if she stopped waiting to run? What if, by planting her feet firmly beside Rivoche’s, Krennic’s grasp upon her would be nulled forever, replaced by a partnership with a woman bold enough to invite a droid into the Imperial Palace against Grand Moff Tarkin’s wishes? A woman who was not only beautiful and clever, but who stunned her in a manner that felt as though she had been filled with the very Force itself?

 

Rivoche has turned away from Krennic as he continues to simper on, the cautious vulnerability in her eyes so different from the blunt disapproval in Tarkin’s. Despite the force of his presence, the crowd lingering behind him, and the fear of Krennic’s retributions blurring along the edges of her vision, Jyn finds the courage to step forward and take Rivoche’s hand.

 

“I, of course, grant—“

 

“I accept.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

  
“Idiot. Can’t even do this without me guiding your hand.”

 

 _Never expect Tarkin to accept defeat graciously_ , Krennic thinks with a grunt. _Or to even dignify me with an angry fuck to acknowledge as much._

 

After another moment of fumbling together, Motti finally manages to enter him just as Krennic draws Tagge fully into his mouth—for the sake of quiet, if nothing else. He’s outmaneuvered Tarkin for the first time in decades, and yet here he is now, being sloppily worked open in a middle-level hotel room by two men whose petty rivalry is only equal to their blandness.

 

Motti had been doing well enough until now, shoving Tagge thrillingly aside in his haste to lay claim to Krennic’s ass, even though he’s hardly lengthy or impatient enough to pound into Krennic properly. Tagge performs much better on that end, though Krennic knows first-hand how difficult goading groundpounders into sucking cock is.

 

With both men in their proper configurations, Krennic is better able to enjoy himself, to focus on his body’s responses to warm flesh against his and the familiar, dirty sounds of two men taking him at once.

 

“See? He likes me better,” Motti pants with a grin, apropos of nothing.

 

In response, Tagge gives a sharp tug to Krennic’s hair, urging him forwards onto his cock and pulling him mostly off of Motti’s in the process. Krennic blinks hazily upwards at him, wishing that he hadn’t once he sees the unfashionable shortness of his bangs, the flat emptiness of his eyes.

 

Krennic bites back an unsatisfied groan, imagining Tarkin’s cock buried inside him instead, nearly overwhelming in how good it feels even while breaching him. Tarkin would even finish in him, unlike Motti and his insistence on barriers. Krennic moans louder before his erection can flag, thrusting backward and rolling his hips to maximize the length and girth inside him.

 

 _“Harder, the both of you!”_ he wants to growl, his arms and thighs aching without enough distraction to bolster them up. He nearly shoves both men off of him in frustration, but Tagge’s thrusts have grown nearly frantic, and it isn’t long before his release fills Krennic’s mouth, thick and arousing.

 

 _One down_ , he tells himself, smiling when the taste settling in his throat evens to one identical to Galen’s.

 

“You fuck as fast as a cadet,” Motti hisses at Tagge’s sagging figure, surging forwards until Krennic is finally able to lose himself in the roughness of his motions, reaching his own release before he’s even registered its approach.

 

Motti finishes with a grunt, immediately pulling out of Krennic. He lets the full barrier litter the floor, climbing up the bed to sprawl out beside Tagge.

 

“Even finished him off for us.”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Krennic grits his teeth while he dresses, more irritated by their pride than the lack of invitation to join them.

 

 _Stars help their wives_ , Krennic thinks with a dirty grin that sours when he looks across the room to see Motti and Tagge already asleep, their bare legs intertwined.

 

  
+

“And there’s my girl,” Krennic chokes out with a laugh when Jyn arrives back to his apartments in a flurry of mint silk. “Returned to me safe and sound. Come, tell me all about it.”

 

Tonight has made three of these performances in as many weeks, each chaperoned by an insistent Tarkin. First, it had been dinner at some posh nightmare Krennic has never heard of anyone besides minor royalty managing to obtain reservations for. He couldn’t bear to speak pleasantries to Jyn for two days after that, until he’d stumbled in after a rendezvous with Admiral Yare and had been forced to ask her to activate the caf droid while he rushed for the fresher. After that, there had been an evening at the opera, followed now by another dinner, this time at Tarkin’s estate.

 

“Of course,” Jyn murmurs, sitting primly beside him while he finishes the last of his wine. For all of his attempts at ingratiating himself with her—empty compliments, new dresses, waiting up for her as Galen would—Jyn remains unyielding. And yet tonight, a gleaming sapphire tucked in her palm, Krennic nearly regrets the efforts of his manipulation.

 

“A pretty treat for a pretty treat,” he croons, patting her hip and grinning at her discomfort. “A token of Rivoche’s affections, I presume?”

 

“It’s a Tarkin family heirloom,” Jyn replies, a sweet wonder barely concealed by her tightly-clenched jaw.

 

“A shame that it doesn’t match your eyes.”

 

The sharpness of his spite worn proudly and still Jyn withstands it, remains seated with him.

 

“And when will she be taking you out next?”

 

“Tomorrow,” Jyn replies warily. “In the early afternoon.”

 

Krennic’s focus has grown too intent for him to summon another underhanded remark. “With her uncle looming behind her again?”

 

“No. Rivoche said that a couple’s fourth meeting is to be unchaperoned, as it always is on Eriadu.”

 

Krennic grits his teeth at the phrase. _As it is on Eriadu_. He’s heard it many times over the past handful of days, the repetition finally goading him into digging through archives Tarkin wouldn’t think to access in order to learn how different life could be on the damned rock. Memories of the discovery burst bitterly within him, and he lights a cigarette, dismissing Jyn with a wave of his hand.

 

“To bed with you, then! You’ll need your sleep if you won’t have him to juxtapose your beauty against.”

 

 _Does Jyn know what he knows?_ he wonders with a fresh wave of disgust. That the modern metropolis of the Outer Rim makes breeding slaves of the women they call brides?

 

Krennic waits until Jyn has padded from the fresher to the room she occupies before storming outside to where his speeder rests, steering himself eagerly into the rush of traffic. He feels nothing but resentment for the girl’s existence and rage at himself for caring whether or not the girl produces a dozen children in as many years against her will. Hadn’t he expected her to meet such an end, after all? When he’d chosen to truncate her education, hadn’t he intended for it to drive her into marriage and childbirth and a plodding life far enough away from his own while still remaining under his influence?

 

But it is the impending threat of another child that truly sickens Krennic, that makes him roil with the nausea that he’d felt the first time he’d seen Jyn snug in Lyra’s arms.  _Another child for Galen to obsess over._

 

Krennic grits his teeth, burning the passenger seat with his cigarette stub in frustration at a speeding Muun beneath him. Jyn has inherited all of Galen’s inability to gauge outcomes with none of his curiosity to counterbalance it. Despite the way Lyra’s features are etched so strongly that they overwhelm his, she is his child, her eyes just as deep and sweet and soft beneath her mother’s tepid brow.

 

When Krennic arrives at Tarkin’s villa in a quarter of the time the flight normally takes, it is the fear of those eyes that draws his blaster forth, that stomps and glowers at the verification droid’s delays.

 

“Bastard!” he shouts the moment he’s let in, marching the length and width of the entry room while Tarkin leisurely makes his way down the stairs.

 

“You are quite fortunate that Rivoche was obligated to attend a ball at the Eriadian embassy following our dinner with the Erso girl. Were she present, I would have had you terminated on sight.”

 

Krennic tosses his blaster aside, charging towards an unyielding Tarkin. “So, will she inseminate her before the ceremony, or does the girl need to be untouched for her wedding night in order to be worthy of bearing a squadron of brats for your darling niece’s pleasure?”

 

Tarkin smirks, the calm twitch of his lips only infuriating Krennic more. “You misunderstand, as you ever do. Though tradition may dictate that at least one child is produced within a generation to continue its legacy, Eriadu is not a planet that devalues its brides such by pushing them into bearing children that they do not want. Solitary children are as common as larger families—consider Rivoche, for example.”

 

Krennic curses once again, pacing and frowning as his conviction deflates with the lack of gleeful malice in Tarkin’s eyes, even as his anger at the reality of a child only amplifies.

 

“You appear to despise this outcome, and yet you chose the Imperial Studies certificate for the girl— a path that parents who expect their children to marry and procreate shortly after graduating usually set them upon.”

 

Tarkin smiles, doubtlessly admiring his ability to level Krennic’s inarticulate rage, doubtlessly understanding the true reason for his appearance tonight.

 

“Besides, with how Rivoche has told me you treat the girl, I would assume that you would revel in such an end for her rather than appearing on my doorstep in all your poor research.”

 

Krennic ignores the provocation, choosing instead to launch into his next wave of attack. “All this time hiding her away, and you never once thought to introduce her to Jyn?”

 

Tarkin smiles wryly. “You are questioning why I granted Rivoche her privacy when you believe a friendship between the two would have strengthened the Tarkin Initiative’s inner camaraderie and public image.”

 

“The station would’ve been done years ago if you stopped being a sour bastard long enough to cooperate with me!”

 

Tarkin seats himself in a chair overlooking the garden, raising his brow when Krennic follows suit. “Your image of your own influence and my motivations is charming, if naive. Jyn is far beneath Rivoche in both status and talents, though I have permitted their courtship for the reasons I have previously listed.”

 

Krennic snorts out his derision, though Tarkin continues without pause. “An alliance with one such as yourself would be equivalent to an alliance with a stinging ant. Pointless when I already possess the upper hand, and without benefit to myself, as it would prove more difficult to control you as a supposed ally than as an enemy.”

 

The genuine apathy in Tarkin’s expression penetrates Krennic. A vulnerability is growing within him, fed by his hindsight. He stares out at the garden just as Tarkin does, focusing on the flashes of red and white lilies that break the monotony of the green canopy and darkened tiles beneath.

 

“Besides, I would never find you worthy enough to converse with Rivoche. Despite her ability to hold her own beautifully, she should not have to concern herself with rabble such as you.”

 

“But I’m worthy enough for you to stick your cock into?”

 

Krennic can sense the lift of Tarkin’s brow and the twist of his downturned mouth without needing to glance over at him. He does so regardless, the silhouette of Tarkin’s profile haunting in the dimmed light of the room’s platform.

 

“And so you illustrate my decision. Who I take to my bed and who my niece associates with frequently do not intersect, and you are no exception.”

 

“Ah, would darling Eriadu shame you for enjoying your men as much as you do your women?”

 

Tarkin cups his own chin thoughtfully, never once bothering to meet Krennic’s gaze. “It is rarer for a husband to take a male bride, though such partnerships are present. Not nearly as celebrated, due to their far less common ability to create children, though they serve a respected purpose. Should both parents die or fail in personal responsibility, such couples within a family will care for and raise the affected children as their own, as I have proudly done with Rivoche.”

 

Krennic is surprised by the lack of condescension or vitriol in now present in Tarkin’s words. _He is educating me_ , he realizes with great discomfort.

 

“And what if someone doesn’t marry at all because they’re a cruel bastard who hates everyone but themselves? Such as in your case?”

 

Tarkin’s eyes flash upon Krennic’s with the thrilling irritation that he has sought all along. His voice remains level, however; his expression unchanged.

 

“I do not hate children,” Tarkin replies without a trace of humor. “Nor the concept of marriage. I have simply never met a partner that deserved the honor of becoming my bride.”

 

Krennic snorts again, delighting in the resulting sneer of Tarkin’s lips.

 

“You wouldn’t marry me, even if I promised to love Rivoche as my own?” Krennic whines, his pout uncomfortably easy to fake. “You wouldn’t let me be the other half of your ‘respected purpose’?”

 

“You are already quite aware of your status, _Director_ Krennic. You revel in it, appearing before me reeking of cheap cigarettes and wine, your arguments unfocused and unfounded in truth.”

 

Krennic kisses him then, grinning when he is shoved downwards, a boot firmly pressed between his shoulder blades while he lies prone upon the floor. Tarkin takes him roughly upon it later, once he has poured and finished off a glass of brandy and rebuffed Krennic’s advances long enough to assert his power. However, it is impossible for Krennic to lose himself in Tarkin’s body as he’s never failed to do before, the damnable image of Jyn’s eyes returning when he shuts his own, shifting nearly immediately into Lyra’s features where they lie beneath a thrusting, panting Galen.

 

When Tarkin finishes, it is without preamble, brief and unfulfilling. He ignores the press of Krennic’s erection against his belly, slapping him across the cheek when he attempts to grind upwards upon it.

 

“Rivoche will propose tomorrow. Do not attempt to interfere or insert yourself in any way,” Tarkin says as he withdraws himself, his cock nearly more enticing now that it has softened, coated with his release.

 

“Should you choose not to heed me, I can assure you that the consequences will be far worse than anything you are capable of imagining.”

 

 

+

The buzz of sex and alcohol and determination carries Krennic back to his apartments, where he immediately orders a cleaning droid to retrieve the brooch from Jyn’s bedside table. His resentment blinds him to all else, and it is that which spurs him into spending five hours modifying an old office holomic into a ring-shaped piece thin enough to worm between the edge of the sapphire and its setting.

 

While the room lightens with the rising sun, Krennic falls into a deep sleep, deaf to the sounds of Jyn waking and dressing until the alert that she has departed sounds. His back seeped in sweat, he watches as she nods to the two troopers accompanying her, nearly glad to have been roused despite the stinging headache building behind his forehead. She allows one to help her into the hovercab, none the wiser regarding the device that pins her draping bodice to her throat.

 

Krennic can barely stand to look at her, at the hope she radiates from her very core. _Blossoming,_ Galen would murmur, his voice rich with awe. His little girl dripping with the same maudlin love her father had once thrown away at the first sniff of interest from a woman.

 

The sounds of Jyn’s transport quickly give way to the hush of Tarkin’s private estate and the purr of Rivoche’s welcome, the incessant beeping of what he assumes is her pet astromech interrupting their idle greetings.

 

“Of course,” Rivoche replies to a particularly loud titter, Jyn stepping about awkwardly as she does so. “Go on and power down. We’ll speak later.”

 

The implant is close enough to Jyn’s throat that Krennic can hear her swallow. “How exactly do you two, well, know one another?”

 

“We’re old friends,” Rivoche says, a spark of amusement hiding within her words. “I was three, seeing my parents off in Eriadu City when a droid came up to me, a cursing pilot threatening to smash his astromech to bits following right behind. Apparently, R5 hadn’t had her memory wiped recently and had developed a bit of a stubborn streak. Uncle Wil, well… “ she trails off, stroking a strand of Jyn’s hair through her fingers, “he’s never approved of their decision to allow her to stay with me, but that morning in the hangar was the last time that I saw them alive.”

 

Krennic shifts in his chair, unable to imagine the infamous resolve of Wilhuff Tarkin bending to an orphan’s pleas, regardless of his kinship to her. He finds himself mimicking Jyn’s nervous swallowing, pouring a few imprecise fingers from his brandy decanter over the brush of a flower being plucked and swept behind Jyn’s ear.

 

“My father tinkered with droids,” Jyn muses over the sound of the two seating themselves in some private alcove. “When we lived on our homestead especially. He liked to build labor models. Even when he was still, his mind was always working, creating things.”

 

“I see,” Rivoche replies softly. “I learned much of what I know from R5 instructing me on how to maintain her, as well as a few droid theory electives that taught me what they could at an academy like the Pleiade. But R5 has been my best teacher, of course, though she’s very specific about the modifications she’ll allow.”

 

“I think I’d like to learn from her as well,” Jyn’s request is cautious, though Rivoche’s silence at the mention of Lah’mu has doubtlessly encouraged her. “At least as a starting point for the education I want. Even if it’s not on the scale of your politics, I’d like to help how I can in making life better for organics and non-organics alike.”

 

 _Galen’s daughter indeed_ , Krennic thinks, sipping the brandy quickly in order to chase down the senseless urge he feels to laugh.

 

“Of course,” Rivoche replies, the breathiness of her words churning up a nauseous anticipation in Krennic’s belly. “Anything you wish.”

 

The silence that both allow to form between them is not artful, though when Rivoche’s voice returns over the line, Krennic can hear the strength of youth and optimism all the clearer for it.

 

“I realize this may sound premature even as I begin to speak. Eriadians are a careful people, though our primal impulses linger. In courtships and marriages, in our desires for children and legacies beyond ourselves.”

 

Krennic listens numbly as her voice tightens, the pull of tears suiting her poorly. “And so I will follow my ancestors and ask the following: Will you marry me, Jyn? Will you be my bride?”

 

Krennic stiffens with a surge of unexamined horror when Jyn does not immediately respond with weeping or an affirmative shout. 

 

“I…it…” Jyn finally stammers out. She is overcome, Krennic realizes; not with surprise or fear, but with the joy of her conviction.

 

“Nothing would make me happier.”

 

Krennic smiles with a triumph that stings like defeat, pouring himself a second glass of brandy as he listens to the press of lips, the brushing of skin, the whip of air that tells him that Rivoche is swinging Jyn around in joyful circles.

 

“We’ll live on Eriadu, far away from this clogged-up nightmare!” Rivoche laughs, both of them panting as they settle down once again. “You’ll love my family’s compound, I just know it. We’ll be wife and bride soon, and have a honeymoon baby just like Uncle Wil wants!”

 

“Yes, yes, yes!” Jyn laughs, punctuating each word with a kiss. “And engineering? Would you allow me to study it, like you said before?”

 

Rivoche’s sigh catches in Krennic’s throat. “Do you truly believe that you would need my permission for such? I will be your wife, not your master.”

 

Jyn barely waits until Rivoche has finished speaking before her next question spills out, ignorant to the ugliness reeling in Krennic’s mind.

 

“But I’ll be expected to bear children, to raise a family?”

 

“Yes,” Rivoche states simply. “There will be expectations placed upon you, as there are upon all in the Tarkin family, by blood or bridehood. You, as the latter, have the ability to choose whether or not to accept that such responsibility comes alongside my proposal.”

 

Krennic finishes off his second glass, the tension in his body relaxing even as his mind races. He smiles at Jyn’s fear, at her panic now that she is being faced with Rivoche’s voice when it falls into cold command.

 

“If you do not wish to follow the framework our marriage would be founded upon, then let us part now before we bind ourselves further.”

 

The line is silent for several moments, broken in time by Jyn’s voice.

 

“I want to marry you. The idea—a family, a child with you—it doesn’t bother me.”

 

Krennic snorts, loud and ugly in the tension of his office. _Truly a eloquent girl_. Wouldn’t Galen be proud of her? Proud of the simpering woman that Krennic has forged from his fiery daughter?

 

The victory of Rivoche’s chuckle is hollow. “Nor does it me.”

 

Krennic glances towards yesterday’s half-filled ashtray, the exacting minimalism of his apartments beginning to creep inwards along the edges of his vision.

 

“I miss having a family,” Jyn says softly, every word echoing louder in Krennic’s frustration. “Papa always said that Mama and I were what made his life worthwhile. I…” Jyn’s words grow watery, the image of her tears only feeding Krennic’s anger. He soon hears the rustling of fabric, the soft clicks of lips joining and parting.

 

“We will have the perfect family and I will give you the most beautiful life.”

 

Rivoche’s voice is pure conviction once again, iron and dutiful. Jyn’s breathing evens slightly, still hitching in her throat when Rivoche speaks again. “And I promise you that my uncle will host your father at our wedding. And that he will know our child. Or children. However few or many you’d like.”

 

“At least two,” Jyn murmurs as though she were imparting a secret. “Then they’ll have one another.”

 

There is more sobbing, of course, followed by more kisses and pretty words about Jyn’s brave and gentle heart that cause Krennic to volley back and forth from a cold stupor into indistinct anger.

 

“Perhaps the strife between your uncle and Papa can yet be mended. You have given me hope that the galaxy is not so fractured as I have known before this.”

 

“I agree, darling. Uncle Wil would’ve had him executed for treason the moment you were brought back to Coruscant were it not. Only Krennic is antithesis to that particular treatment of his enemies, but he’s told me many times that he simply hasn’t cared enough to find a way to make his murder look like an accident yet.”

 

It is the laugh that Jyn huffs out through her tears that finally causes Krennic to slam the bottom of the decanter down onto the listening device before rising to pace around his office, nursing a fury in his belly that refilling his glass once again does nothing to damper.

 

 

+

“Congratulations,” Krennic coos into the semidarkness, snubbing his eleventh cigarette out after he’s downed the dregs left in the brandy decanter. When he rises, the room’s lights glow fully into life, allowing Krennic to delight in how quickly the happiness bleeds from Jyn’s face.

 

“Thank you,” Jyn replies, turning immediately towards the bedroom she’s come to occupy, barely veering away from Krennic’s attempted grip in the process. Instead, they stumble against the corridor wall, gazes matched.

 

“Unfortunately, I didn’t think to bother saving you a glass.”

 

Jyn’s face smudges out of focus. “I wouldn’t have accepted it.”

 

“Your father would be proud of you, you know.”

 

Jyn is silent, though Krennic would have continued even had she spoken. Nineteen years of resentment has dredged itself up from beneath his resolve, finally spurred forth by the sight of Lyra’s fury in Galen’s eyes before him.

 

“He was my lover, you stupid girl!” Krennic bellows, slamming the empty decanter against the wall beside Jyn’s ear, barely missing the dappled lily tucked behind it. “Slavishly devoted to me until your backwater slut of a mother spread her legs and saddled him with you!”

 

Jyn, to her credit, does not scream. Instead, she sinks to the floor, huddling slightly, face downcast, the flower cupped safely within her palms. The haze building in Krennic’s mind attempts to shield him from the dark stain seeping behind her like a halo, from the nostalgia of dark, soft eyes wounded by his rage.

 

“And now you’ll follow in her footsteps. Speared on the synthskin cock strapped to her that Tarkin’s ordered until you’re knocked up with a brat of your own!” Krennic spits, barely aware that Jyn has risen before him once again, shoulders squared and lowered like an officer’s.

 

“Proper little status fucker, you’ll be.”

 

“You’re jealous,” Jyn hisses, her voice rich with the satisfaction of knowing she’s correct. “Jealous that Rivoche loves me, that Papa loves me, that Mama lives on in me.”

 

Krennic staggers backwards before he can stop himself, his anger simmering down into an old, churning regret.

 

“Tarkin hates you,” she continues lowly, “And once we’re married, Rivoche won’t allow Papa and I to be your hostages any longer. You’re the status fucker because you’re not good enough to be anything more!”

 

 _A twenty one-year-old lovestruck girl, unwittingly begging her uncle to stop the realization of the greatest battle station the galaxy has ever known_. Krennic laughs, unwilling to allow himself any other reaction, even in this state.

 

“Now that we are on the topic, I think that it’s been far too long since I paid dear Galen a visit. Some distance apart should give you enough time to regret what you’ve said tonight.”

 

“I don’t regret speaking the truth,” Jyn’s words seethe in a way that penetrates underneath Krennic’s uniform and directly against his skin. He shakes his head, the spinning of the corridor righting around him as he composes himself enough to speak again.

 

“I’ll be sure to tell him of your joyful news. Such a pity that he’ll be far too tied up with work to attend the ceremony.”

 

“No!” Jyn shouts, her body poised to lunge at Krennic before she collapses into her defeat. She sobs and heaves, prone upon the floor, apparently ignorant to his continued presence.

 

Krennic forces himself to remain in the intimacy of the moment despite the need he feels to leave this creature to her self-pity, the door swishing tightly closed behind him once he is satisfied by her grief.

 

“Emergency inspection mission to Eadu. Dispatch a squadron immediately.”

 

Krennic braces his hands against the edge of the holocom, anticipating the planes of hyperspace that will blur until they are only a bright, final light surrounding him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The tags changed slightly because the Motti/Tagge/Krennic threesome was originally a Krennic/slimy male OC scene before editing. Once again, thank you to Baethoven for giving me the idea to include them—it certainly makes the ANH conference room scene a little more fun to watch!  
> -Rivoche doesn’t know anything about the Death Star (yet). Jyn is slightly more aware that her father is working on a weapon for the Empire, but her love for Rivoche is blinding her a little in terms of who Tarkin really is.  
> -The sapphire spy brooch is another Legends cameo. Rivoche, as a deep-cover agent, was gifted it by the Rebellion to use as a poison detector.


	3. Chapter 3

  
Coruscant is foul in every way to Tarkin, its upper levels still glittering with the same decadence they had when the Republic thrived. Despite the isolation of his interior office, he can sense its rotation around Coruscant Prime, a process as immense and immortal as the station he has spent nearly two decades shaping into the legacy he will leave upon the galaxy at large.

 

It is thoughts of another actualization of his strength that interrupt Tarkin now, however. Rivoche is to be his legacy upon Eriadu—a task both lesser and greater than the one he has spent just as many years overseeing. He allows himself a brief distraction from the message he has been composing to Bast, remembering again the exchange that has yet to fade into the natural rapport they have ever shared.

 

“I am marrying Jyn Erso,” she had told him three evenings ago as she entered his office, her tone and posture brokering no dissent.

 

Were Tarkin a lesser man, he would have raged at her impulsiveness, shouted insults at her arrogance, at her nearly comically inopportune choice of bride. Instead, he had frowned, pride buried underneath his irritation at her ability to issue a command in territory not her own.

 

“I had discerned as much,” he had replied, snapping his private datapad into its port just as he does now. “Surely, you recall the difficulties we have discussed prior and will forgive me my lack of enthusiasm.”

 

“She is not an ignorant pawn, nor a burden, and she is certainly not a backwater fool! I cannot believe you cannot see what she is even after the time you spent chaperoning us!”

 

Rivoche’s cheeks were reddened with conviction, her breath shuddering from her.

 

“Look past her father and Krennic and see her! She is—she is so much greater than either of us.”

 

“If only your persuasion could make her so.”

 

“I love her,” Rivoche had hissed, her eyes damp, the tendons in her jaw tightening with resolve.

 

“So I know,” Tarkin replied humorlessly, a hand sweeping upwards to rest upon his chin. “Despite all the possible counsel I have provided you, you have placed both of us into an agreement that I am reluctant to allow.”

 

“You must allow it!”

 

“Careful, girl. I must do nothing of the sort. You are receiving my sanction only due to the detriment it would cause your fledgling career.” The station’s laser flashes brightly behind his closed eyes when he blinks, reminding him of the tenuous grasp he holds on Erso’s genius and Krennic’s restraint.

 

“And not for the sake of my happiness?”

 

“Do not allow your infatuation to cloud your judgement and muddle what I tell you. Passion such as that will gain you no power in the political sphere.”

 

“You must hate me if you think I’m too stupid to choose my own bride!“ Rivoche spits, wiping the back of her hand across her cheeks.

 

Tarkin sighs, activating his desk’s holoprojector to reveal the image of her upper-level Academy portrait that has become his automatic display.

 

“I do not hate you, dear girl. I am merely disappointed in the position your impulsiveness has placed you. I think of your happiness beyond this moment, which I sincerely hope you have not compromised while I enable such.”

 

Rivoche shudders, rushing behind Tarkin’s desk and embracing him tightly. “I promise, Jyn will be the most wonderful bride.” She composes herself quickly, though one hand remains clasped in his. “We will do everything you ask of us, so long as we are able to do so together.”

 

Tarkin cups her cheek, frowning once more. “She must be conditioned to Eriadian standards if she is not to make fools not only of the two of you, but of myself and the extent of our lineage as well.”

 

Rivoche nodded. “I will tell her. Thank you, Uncle Wil.”

 

Tarkin had waved her tenderness away, reassured that his continued guidance and the responsibility of marriage would aid her in rising to the heights she is expected to ascend to. She will wed the girl—he has come to terms with as much now—and will return to conquer the political clutter of Eriadu City just as her father had once done, her hand resting atop the child growing in her bride’s belly.

 

The clatter of heeled slippers disengages Tarkin from his certainty. There is only one pair of such footsteps that would be accompanied by a droid’s shrill whirring and only one being trusted enough to enter his office without the proper clearance and greeting.

 

“Jyn’s in danger!”

 

Tarkin’s brow furrows, forming a disengaged stare that would look blank on any other man.

 

“Krennic attached a device to the Eye of Jea—he attempted to destroy it but she was able to reroute the transmission. She says that Krennic attempted to smash her skull before he left to rape her father on one of your bases!”

 

Tarkin does not allow the fury building within him to show, refuses to submit to the growing chaos in Rivoche’s tone. What occurs between Krennic and Erso is of little matter to him, so long as Erso continues to make progress upon the laser’s completion. The use of a recording device, however, paired with the attempt to impose harm on his niece’s bride, is far more disrespect than he can continue to disregard.

 

“If she retains the mind and will to contact you, I cannot imagine that she is in fatal distress.”

 

Rivoche’s expression hardens, her eyes narrowing against Tarkin's. Despite their common enemy, this is the first time he has ever felt as though they are not truly allies.

 

“You did not raise me to obey petty tyrants. We will rescue her!”

 

Tarkin frowns at the grandiosity she is granting Krennic in lieu of an agreement.

 

“Uncle Wil!” Rivoche shrieks, slamming the astromech’s projector into activity. “Please! Listen to her!”'

 

Tarkin grits his teeth against her histrionics, continuing to frown at Jyn’s translucent blue figure when it appears before them. She leans upon her elbows against what he knows to be Krennic’s desk, appearing not to notice either of them. The projection disappears, replaced by several unintelligible noises. Tarkin waits until Jyn’s image returns to speak, much to Rivoche’s irritation.

 

“Rivoche has told me that Krennic attempted to kill you. Is this true?”

 

“I’m not—” the projection gurgles, growing obscured once again. “—he was quite intoxicated.”

 

“Foul bastard,” Rivoche hisses, tapping her nails against the droid’s polished dome.

 

Tarkin keys his squadron’s code into his comm, swallowing his disgust and ignoring Rivoche’s grateful hand upon his.

 

“Retrieve Jyn Erso from Director Krennic’s apartments immediately and have her brought to me.”

 

“Right away, Sir.”

 

Rivoche smiles through her unshed tears when Tarkin nods to her, her other hand rubbing patterns into the metal of the astromech. It beeps several times at Tarkin, much to his annoyance.

 

“Go and make yourself presentable,” he finally says, resisting the urge to formally dismiss her.

 

“What of Krennic?”

 

“Do not concern yourself with his meddling.  It will end shortly.”

 

 

+

The creature who stands on Tarkin’s landing an hour later is not the weeping casualty he had been led to imagine. Dressed in a dull pair of trousers and a matching tunic, a wilting panther lily still clinging to the gloss of her hair, Jyn’s eyes shift constantly from Tarkin to Rivoche to the darkness behind her, the tension of a caged animal present in her every movement. His niece remains firmly by his side while she enters the villa, as though waiting for his clearance before fawning over her hardened, bedraggled figure.

 

Tarkin takes his time examining Jyn while they wait for the service droid to retrieve her luggage. Though she favors the nondescriptness of her mother, she and her father share the same wide, soft eyes that remind Tarkin of a particularly stupid nerf. Pretty without any sort of defining feature to make her striking, unaided by Krennic’s attempts at dressing and grooming her. There is a blandness under the sharp bangs and against the placid mouth that nearly unsettles him, making him question for the thousandth time why his luminous niece has chosen to marry her if not simply to spite him.

 

“Welcome, child,” Tarkin says without pleasure, his irritation intensifying when Rivoche does indeed collect her into her arms, passion overcome by decorum even while the death troopers remain, waiting for dismissal.

 

“Leave us,” he commands them with a wave, refusing to acknowledge his niece’s unsightly display with the proper disdain. He is unimpressed by Jyn’s rasping, fearful pants, silently casting his disgust upon them until the girl’s eyes flicker upwards to his.

 

Jyn shudders, collecting herself somewhat. Her face remains pressed between Rivoche’s, hands, its ruddiness contrasting horribly with the paleness of her neck, with Rivoche’s amber palms. The girl is predisposed to cling to any scraps of affection she can, Tarkin has noticed, her every motion seeking protection—a weakness she has doubtlessly inherited from her father.

 

“The two of you may speak privately, though I implore you to be mindful of your words and actions. Be ready to depart at 0630 tomorrow.”

 

Jyn nods, the juxtaposition of her anxiety beside Rivoche’s knowing smile nearly comical enough to draw a chuckle from Tarkin’s throat.

 

“We’ll be good girls, Uncle Wil,” Rivoche promises with a humorless laugh, Jyn’s hand worming it’s way into hers while they mount the stairs, that damnable astromech rushing up beside them. Tarkin lingers behind, imagining that he can hear Rivoche breaking them into a gallop once they’ve passed his line of sight.

 

 _Spirit is not disobedience_ , Tarkin reminds himself, running his fingers along the angles of the bannister. Rivoche has grown strong in his absence, yet still bends to his command with little enough chastisement. Despite her choice of bride, she has not absorbed any of the girl’s more unsavory tendencies. Perhaps once he has rectified Krennic’s troublesome presence, Jyn will find the initiative to match Rivoche in wit and worth. Tarkin’s lip curls in satisfaction at the thought of such, mounting the stairs and passing by Rivoche’s room without pause.

 

Until then, however, he will be content in designing the man’s downfall.

 

  
  
+

The sky above Eriadu City is a welcome reprieve from the monotony of hyperspace and the empty glamour of Coruscant. Against the setting sun, the air is nearly sultry, ripe with the promise of summer’s arrival in this hemisphere. Tarkin breathes it in deeply, his smile genuine once the haze of durasteel has given way to wild richness beneath them, when the first sights of the jagged compound walls are visible from his speeder. He is not a sentimental man, he knows, but few would fault him the affection he feels for the smells of wood and drapery, the lack of inorganic whirrings once the astromech has been left to recharge, the quiet hum of dormancy the main house has acquired in their absence.

 

Despite his and Rivoche’s prolonged absence, the servants prove capable enough of obeying his order to have dinner prepared by their arrival. He is satisfied with their work, especially when sees Rivoche’s face light up at the sight of the cheese rolls she has always favored. Tarkin eats heartily, watching Jyn stuff herself with all the grace and restraint of a Hutt between sips of wine. He is so content that he is nearly startled by the clatter of boots and armor and blasters, by Krennic’s pathetic attempts at projecting the power he was never designed to possess.

 

“Director Krennic. I see that you have wisely heeded my summons.”

 

“I barely set foot on Eadu before I was called out here. Such a shame,” he growls. “I had several new tactics to implement that would have vastly improved the productivity of our loyal scientists.”

 

Tarkin’s lip curls at the idiotic breach of security before he can stop himself. “Perhaps you should take better care not to allow your impulses to control your ability to perform your duties.”

 

Krennic ignores him, instead coming to stand behind Jyn’s chair.

 

“Jyn, my pretty thing!” he tuts, stroking a ruffled strand of hair behind her ear. “Left Coruscant and wandered off to Eriadu, did you? Naughty, terribly naughty!”

 

Rivoche’s shoulders tighten, her lips pursed against the smug fury in Krennic’s eyes.

 

“The girl’s whereabouts are no longer your concern,” Tarkin replies, his tone inscrutable. “Her intended wife’s company and my name are far more respectable than any state you have been keeping her in.”

 

“I have every right to be concerned, considering that your shuttle remains docked in the city’s upper port.”

 

Rivoche smiles condescendingly, spearing a piece of Ewok steak onto her fork. “That’s because he brought us here in the _River Pearl_.  It's named for me, you know.”

 

“How _darling_ ,” Krennic’s voice drips with ridicule, watching as Jyn swallows awkwardly around her bite of bread, darting her hand out for a second serving of mashed hemmel.

 

“Rivoche is precious to me. A shame that you have not shared such affection with your own ward, though it has apparently been to her benefit.”

 

A primal, vulnerable noise erupts from the back of Krennic’s throat. “Considering that you never mentioned—“

 

“Jyn,” Rivoche interjects, her eyes locking with Krennic’s before coaxing Jyn’s lowered gaze upwards. “You seemed to enjoy your root and nut mash, darling. Would you like another bowl of it?”

 

The girl’s face reddens, her utensils shaking in her grip.

 

“I’d quite like a bowl myself, you know,” Krennic snorts, swiping Jyn’s second roll from its plate and sweeping neatly into the seat beside her.

 

Rivoche’s eyes sharpen, her knife and fork working themselves deeply into her steak.

  
“Are you certain you’re well? You’re usually much more talkative with Uncle Wil and I. I’m concerned.”

 

“I was quite well,” Jyn replies lowly, staring directly into Krennic’s diverted eyes.

 

Tarkin lifts his brow, smirking at her childish boldness before addressing Krennic himself.

 

“Naturally, you’d fail to feed the girl properly while proceeding to glut yourself to plumpness. Disgraceful.”

 

Krennic attempts a sneer. “You’ve never complained before about my—“

 

“Rivoche, my dear, your aunt has confirmed—“

 

“Stop interrupting me! And have one of your droids bring me whatever Outer Rim scraps you can bear to part with.”

 

“I will not take orders from you,” Tarkin grits, mindful of the reaction Krennic intends to stir from him. “Remember that it is my ancestral home you soil with your manners. I reserve the right to truncate your profanities as I see fit.”

 

Rivoche smiles triumphantly. ”Jyn is to be treated with the highest honor as a Tarkin bride. If she wishes for her guest to dine with her wife’s family, she will order it to be so.”

 

Jyn stares at her empty plate, her reserve of confidence visibly draining with Krennic’s continued presence.

 

“Enough of this,” Tarkin snaps, placing his napkin atop his half-finished meal. “You were summoned to Eriadu as a courtesy, _Director_. While I intend to discuss and enact my niece’s marriage to your ward, you will be dismissed with no familiarity gained.”

 

Jyn’s eyes dart up to his, the hope in them unfaltering even when Krennic snorts out a laugh.

 

“Is ‘familiarity’ what they call it out here?”

 

“Now then, if we are finished, it would be wise to discuss the procedure in full.”

 

Tarkin rises from his chair, Rivoche and Jyn joining him without prompting. He leads them into the great chamber, ignoring Krennic’s pitiful stomping directly behind him. As always, he feels a thrill of pride run through him when he enters it, seating himself into his father’s brocade armchair, the wealth of bridal pelts and mounted heads surrounding him proof of the strength of his heritage.

 

Rivoche grins, folding herself immediately in her favorite chair across from him and pulling Jyn close beside her, warding off Krennic with a dangerous look. The back is still draped with Tarkin’s mother’s tiger pelt, and he feels his lips quirk into a smile, remembering a time when the fingers that ran through it were plump and unadorned.

 

“This one belonged to my grandmother,” Rivoche explains, petting the fur and guiding Jyn to do the same. “The mounted head to your left you was once attached to it.”

 

Jyn turns away from where Krennic has attempted to seat himself on the ottoman beside her. “Its eyes are beautiful,” she murmurs.

 

“Yours are far sweeter.”

 

Tarkin feels his lips quirk slightly at their love-play before he is aware of the response.

 

“Now then, girl,” he begins, his features schooled into sternness once again. “As Rivoche has likely told you, the Tarkin family maintains many of the older Eriadian marriage customs. This planet looks upon tradition highly. As you are not from this world, a traditional wedding, if properly followed, will aid both you and Rivoche immensely in your future successes.”

 

Tarkin scrutinizes Jyn’s impassive expression before continuing, noting her continued matching of his gaze despite Krennic’s attempts to intimidate her into meekness.

 

“Tarkin brides spend three days in confinement before their wedding ceremony with those who have already undergone the same preparations. Your retinue will gather you at dusk tomorrow and will consist of Rivoche’s three female cousins and two aunts from her mother’s family. Her grandmother and mother have long since died.”

 

Tarkin pauses, allowing his words to settle amongst them while a Twi’lek servant silently offers them a wine platter. As Krennic reaches for a glass, Jyn’s eyes flicker between Tarkin and Rivoche, who waves away the bottle and takes several cubes of cheese for them to share.

 

“You will be bathed and dressed and told many of this planet’s legends. Even though such fables are just that, your appreciation for and knowledge of them will be critical in your warm acceptance into wider Eriadian society.”

 

Jyn nods, the anticipation palpably growing within her. Tarkin smiles humorlessly, observing Krennic’s rapidly-emptying glass.

 

“While you remain here, myself, Rivoche, and her maternal uncle and cousin will rise at dawn tomorrow for an expedition into the wilderness surrounding us. We too will spend three days readying ourselves for the ceremony, accompanying Rivoche while she hunts and skins an animal for your bridal pelt.”

 

“It should be white,” Krennic says with a wag of his finger. “From something gentle. Perhaps with big, unwitting eyes like hers.”

 

“It will be a pelt belonging to a beast of my choosing. My gift to her, not a symbol of your decadent—“

 

“As she has stated,” Tarkin continues, concealing his irritation, “the pelt will be chosen by Rivoche. Once it has been gifted to you, the ceremony will commence—a brief, modest affair. Afterwards, all save you and Rivoche will remain on the compound’s first level. I trust that I will not need to detail your activities upstairs while the feast beneath you proceeds.”

 

Krennic snorts into his glass of wine, startling Jyn. She tenses, her back straightening with a prey animal’s alertness. Rivoche’s eyes, of course, remain steady against Tarkin’s. He feels a surge of pride at her at the dignity with which she conducts herself, never once granting Krennic the higher ground.

 

“Rivoche’s genetic material has been extracted and prepared in the fashion you doubtlessly learned of at the Academy. With all the necessary measures taken, we hold the highest confidence that you will conceive a child. A honeymoon baby, as they are commonly called.”

 

Krennic makes another ugly sound, his intent study of Jyn interrupted when he sees the radiant look that she and Rivoche share, their fingers twining in her lap.

 

“You will both remain at the compound for several months afterwards, both to allow Jyn to become acclimated to life here and to wait out the Eriadian senate’s recess. Once nominations begin, you will host your first party as a society couple—a festivity that Director Krennic and I will unfortunately be too preoccupied to attend.”

 

Jyn looks over at Krennic, her lips twitching with what Tarkin suspects is a victorious smile.

 

“Enjoy your figure while you can, little thing,” he purrs, patting Jyn’s belly before Rivoche is able to snatch his grip away.

 

“Come, now,” she soothes, ignoring Krennic and looping her arm through Jyn’s. “R5 should be powered up by now and I don’t feel like smelling burnt death trooper all night if she’s kept out in the _River Pearl_.”

 

Tarkin finds himself both pleased and disconcerted by the determination ripe in Jyn’s expression, her eyes focused on the glass of the tiger’s until Rivoche gently leads her away.

 

  
+

Tarkin does not bother to remove his uniform once he has reached the master bedroom, bidding good-night to Rivoche and Jyn as he passes them. Instead, he chooses to rest beside the window that overlooks the forefront of the compound, the darkened walls before him obscuring much of the landscape’s raw beauty.

 

 _Death will suit Krennic_ , he thinks with bitter amusement, a glass of brandy lax in his hand.

 

A rough series of knocks upon the door lights a fire within Tarkin, leading him to usher Krennic inside with more energy than the man had clearly expected. Tarkin returns to his prior stance, setting his glass down while Krennic paces awkwardly beside the mirror. He watches their reflections from the corner of his eye, Krennic’s idle softness juxtaposed against the gaunt planes of his own face that would look haggard on a lesser man.

 

“You didn’t tell the girl the best part of the festivities,” Krennic tuts, the sloppiness of his features telling Tarkin that the bottle of wine downstairs has been emptied.

 

“I will not be the one to discuss such matters with her. Rivoche’s kin will detail her preparations in a far more traditional setting.”

 

Krennic grins, laughing when his attempt at grabbing Tarkin’s shoulders lands him flat on the rug.

 

“It sounds divine. Three days drunk on wine and food and pleasure before being taken like a bitch in heat from it all.”

 

Tarkin frowns, ignoring Krennic’s silent plea for help in rising off the floor. “Base propaganda, or perhaps your own sick imaginings. Tarkins do not drug their brides. You could learn from our traditions, you know. Sedatives are quite costly with the way you employ them on Eadu.”

 

“Damn you!” Krennic curses, tugging himself up using the duvet as leverage. He raises a hand to Tarkin, which is quickly captured and held close.

 

Tarkin smirks, patting Krennic’s hand as though it were a naughty child’s. “We treat them with the greatest respect and welcome. After all, they have proven themselves worthy to become part of our family’s legacy.”

 

Krennic snarls, rubbing his thigh roughly against Tarkin’s until he is finally released. “Then tell me how this backwater planet can imagine itself to be anything but primeval with rituals like yours.”

 

“I need not defend my familial traditions to one such as you.”

 

“Tell me anyway,” Krennic coos, sitting himself primly against one of the lower bedposts. “Describe them to me, as though I were your bride. Show me how much I’d enjoy spending three days with you in here fucking me pregnant.”

 

The words make Tarkin’s jaw tighten in anger, yet the thought of indulging in such sacrilege with one who will soon lie dead at his feet is heady enough to urge him forwards against Krennic’s mouth.

 

“As I have told you previously, I hold you in the lowest regard. I refuse to repeat my words for your perverse enjoyment,” he growls, pulling Krennic’s collar until his fingers dig in to the furious pulse beneath Krennic’s skin.

 

“Besides, such ceremony is more than a creature like you deserves.”

 

Krennic lets out a choked moan, his cheeks flushing an unnatural red. He offers no resistance, Tarkin observes, providing him with enough revulsion to drop Krennic back against the bed.

 

“You’d take me like one,” Krennic gasps, sputtering while he attempts to remove his cape and tunic. “No different from the other backwater beasts on this planet.”

 

Tarkin grins, removing his own uniform with a practiced hand before reaching for the pot of paricha oil he’d placed within his grasp.

 

“Fast and hard and deep,” he snarls, tearing Krennic’s trousers at the seams. “To ensure it takes.”

 

Krennic reaches for Tarkin’s cock, stroking it fully to hardness. He runs his other hand down between his legs, spreading himself obscenely. He’s flushed and glistening and Tarkin drops the pot in his desperation to taste the flesh that Krennic is taunting him with.

 

“I want it,” he hisses, glutting himself on Tarkin’s growl, his bare foot spreading the spilled oil across the pelt beneath them.

 

“You need it,” Tarkin corrects, lifting Krennic’s thighs effortlessly to bury himself in the keening body beneath him.

 

“You’d prefer me like that, wouldn’t you, you sick bastard? I’d be bloated and foul and you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off of me.”

 

Tarkin thrusts harder, Krennic’s body soft and vulnerable beneath him, accepting the hand upon his jugular with a pulsing shout. It is as though Tarkin’s years of control in handling Krennic’s foolishness have dissipated into nothing more that his throat beneath his fingers, his climax nearing with every tremor of Krennic’s struggling body.

 

Krennic continues to thrash as Tarkin comes deep within him, his eyes bulging in fear when Tarkin’s other hand comes to encircle his neck. It is only the distant thought of shedding Krennic’s unworthy blood on the ground of his homeworld that causes Tarkin to withdraw from him, watching as Krennic heaves and shakes and attempts to speak.

 

“Yes,” he coughs after several minutes, an arm flailing out to grasp at Tarkin’s wrist. “The girl will enjoy that.”

 

Tarkin’s eyes narrow, his hand clamping once more against Krennic’s reddened, seizing throat. “You’ve been called away on an urgent mission by orders of the Emperor, effective immediately.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The procedure that Tarkin mentions to Jyn is based on an in-development real-life procedure that uses stem cells to allow cisgender female couples to have a biological child. In a galaxy with Vader’s suit and clone armies, how difficult or rare could a procedure like this be?  
> -Apparently Ewok jerky was a common snack in the Outer Rim, and I wouldn’t put it above Tarkin to import steak made from lower sentients.  
> -Paricha is a canon vegetable. Here, it’s made into an oil and used as lube.


	4. Chapter 4

The late afternoon heat is like a second pack upon Rivoche’s shoulders, weighing down her every step. She lets out a heavy breath, focusing on the ground beneath her boots. The floor of Sovereign Canyon is long below them now, and despite the obstacle they present on the narrow path, she cannot bring herself to resent the vines that she knows have battled thousands of others back in order to reach the sun.

 

_The plateau is mine to conquer. By my birthright, by my family’s side, I am strong._

 

She repeats this mantra again, ignoring Uncle Reve’s cursing when Sidvin is sick over the edge as she works to hold pace with their Rodian guide and Tarkin, whose stride is unperturbed by the years he’s spent away from the plateau.

 

After a few more minutes of walking, the Rodian makes a series of noises to Tarkin that Rivoche quickly translates:

 

_“Sir, we are approaching a natural widening of the trail that includes a cavern with a water source. I suggest that we make camp here.”_

 

“Halt,” Tarkin orders, turning back to where Rivoche stands. “My girl, I recommend that we stop up ahead.”

 

“We’ll continue on up to the overhang,” Rivoche tells Reve and Sidvin, trying to disguise her exhaustion, “and stay there for the night.”

 

Rivoche begrudgingly forces herself to stay upright once they arrive at the cavern, thoughts of Jyn’s excitement over her bridal pelt sustaining her through the irritating tasks of assembling hers and Tarkin’s tent and de-scaling the aptly-named hardfish with Sidvin that Tarkin and the Rodian spear from a pool.

 

“Still wish I’d seen your bride before we left,” Sidvin grunts into his fish once Reve has roasted it, much to Tarkin’s disgust. “Your stupid droid tried to zap me when I knocked on her door this morning!”

 

“R5’s original programming was done by a coffin jockey and she still has more sense than you!”

 

A tense silence falls over the party, eased by the warmth and crackle of the fire. The Rodian eats quickly and retires, his sounds barely a presence in the overwhelming noise of the canyon life beneath them.

 

Finally, foolishly, Reve speaks. “So, Wil, would Gideon be proud of the girl’s bride? What’s her best feature? Hips, lips, or—”

 

“Enough of this idle talk,” Tarkin says sharply.  "You were not nearly as vulgar when it was your sister we hunted for."

 

Reve pants, laughing. “Hells, Wil. I’m just preparing your precious darling for the sight of her in those wrappings!”

 

Tarkin does not respond, finishing the last of his meal and rising to clean his utensils.

 

“Are we hunting veermok tonight?” Reve asks her, his face twisted into a smugness that reminds Rivoche far too much of Krennic for her to remain composed.

 

“No,” she growls, spearing the last of her hardfish.

 

“Veermok or big cat—those are the ones that we Seswennans admire,” Reve continues, an ugly amusement in his eyes. “It might require a little bloodshed, but I’m sure your bride would be all the more welcoming underneath it.”

 

Rivoche sets her plate upon the ground with shaking hands, her eyes never leaving Reve’s. “Your opinion matters not. We are not hunting veermok, and it is the wrong season for panthers and tigers in this hemisphere.”

 

“Touchy,” Sidvin snorts from the rim of his cup, quite fortunate to be beneath Rivoche’s notice at the moment.

 

Reve makes a disappointed noise. “Your uncle coddles you. He’s going soft in the brain and belly, mingling with those Core Worlders all the time. Perhaps if he’d taken a bride as fine as Anilese, the Tarkins wouldn’t have to worry about losing an heir. Takes a load off of my shoulders, having two daughters in the cradle and a son by my side!”

 

Rivoche grins at Reve’s poorly-hidden terror when Tarkin looms into view behind her. “While you both are respected members of her mother’s extended family, do remember that Rivoche and I are of Eriadu in truth. As such, we will not take into account off-world opinions on our traditions.”

 

Tarkin pauses, allowing his rinsed hunting knife to shine in the moonlight for a subtle, exacting moment. “You are outsiders upon our land, and, as such, I suggest that you and your son respect the natural order of where you find yourselves.”

 

Reve huffs out a breath, practically dragging Sid with him into their tent as Tarkin sits down beside Rivoche, who is more furious at her own self-doubt from Reve’s analysis than she is his arrogance.

 

“It truly is incredible out here,” Rivoche says after taking a moment to regain her composure.

 

Tarkin sighs. “Being away from Eriadu has never suited me. It is a sacrifice I make as a man who values order in the galaxy and who is wise enough to know that it is he who is most capable of enacting the necessary measures to keep it safe.”  There is a regret in her uncle’s eyes, a vulnerability that Rivoche has never seen before. She shudders, nestling herself against his side.

 

“However,” Tarkin continues, looking down at Rivoche with a soft smile, “it is a great comfort to know that my actions have allowed you to grow up in a galaxy far different than the one you were born into. Perhaps, should you be elected governor of Eriadu, you will one day do the same for your children.”

 

Rivoche rests her cheek against Tarkin’s shoulder, his familiar scent diluted with the grime of the trail. She has been off-world for far longer than most who hunt for their bridal pelts, never returning on breaks for more than a week upon the plains and a brief lesson on caping a Highlands bison before Tarkin would whisk her away to sit in on meetings of the Eriadian senate. When the practice of these hunts was widespread, many brides were presented with shrouds rather than pelts.

 

_Jyn cannot be one of them. Must not be one of them._

 

If Tarkin can feel the tension in Rivoche’s body, he does not acknowledge it. Instead, he pulls a handful of canyon cherries from his vest pocket, placing half of them into her eager palm. “Our homeworld is tender and fruitful beneath its cruelty, yielding itself only to those who prove their worth. That is said to be the true lesson behind a bridal hunt—to be as unrelenting as the stone we use as shelter to the outer world, and as sustaining as the pool beside us when our brides are in our arms.”

 

Rivoche nods, the sweet-sour fruit momentarily dulling her panic. Tarkin cups her chin firmly once she has finished them, his eyes steely with resolve. “During tomorrow’s hunt, you must embody the Plateau itself. While rudimentary compared to the training that your father and I received, you must apply the skills that you have learned off-world—to take control of opportunity any that is presented to you and to use caution, even in your boldness.”

 

Tarkin’s lips twitch, his brow lowering until he looks every one of his sixty-two years. Rivoche has never seen her uncle cry, and she finds that she cannot bear the thought of being the cause of such. She feels a thick, raw pressure rise within her, a desire to slaughter every creature they encounter if it will bring her his renown.

 

“I do swear, Uncle Wil.”

 

 

+

Rivoche cannot sleep despite her aching legs, her mind begging for rest even as it races wildly. Her thoughts are cyclic, returning from every possible outcome of her hunt to the fear of injury or death that she has not allowed herself to acknowledge until Tarkin had done so. She fumbles with her pack for the holoimage of her parents, careful not to wake her uncle where he rests beside her.

 

_Meri of Seswenna. A fine woman and a finer senator. The galaxy is poorer without her._

 

_Gideon Tarkin. A brilliant soldier who was far too trusting for his profession. May we all know such love as he had for his family._

 

Rivoche does not turn the projector on for fear of disturbing him, but in process of withdrawing it, she realizes that it has been packed above a kyber crystal that hangs from a fibrous chain.

 

“My mother gave it to me before she died,” Jyn had said tersely when Tarkin had asked about it on their second outing, spotting it peeking from the opening of her collar.

 

Rivoche has never been in the habit of kindness, of feeling immediate surges of warmth towards flustered young women who looked as though they wished to be both rescued and ignored at once. None of the other students at the Pleiade had stirred anything more than momentary lust in her, nor had she thought they deserved to. They had viewed her as she had intended—an indomitable force, a solitary leader, a glittering party to which no-one else was invited. Rivoche is still unsure how Jyn has altered this pattern, has fitted herself into her being as effortlessly as the slide of water across the stones in the pool beside her.

 

Rivoche grins into her folded arm, remembering how Jyn had been frightened by her, hid it poorly, and yet still approached her, every step exposing a glimpse of this same kyber crystal tied to her slipper. She thinks again of the moment in her uncle’s study, when she had raised her voice in the first defiance of his orders that she can recall. They will age here together now, their futures linked by Rivoche’s proud impulse and Jyn’s trust. Once the hunt is complete and the ceremony performed, they will be wife and bride underneath the pelt Rivoche will present to her, both of them naked and wanting. Shortly thereafter, they will be Mumma and Mama, cradling a plump infant between them.

 

Rivoche shifts position under her blanket, suddenly concerned. By now, her aunts and cousins have have surely shown Jyn the flimsiness of the gauze she will wear for the ceremony, leaving her effectively naked until Rivoche is permitted to drape her with her bridal pelt. She will wear it well, of course, though Rivoche knows such displays must seem degrading to an off-worlder. She wishes that she could see Jyn before the ceremony, reassure her that her family is looking upon her as a beautiful gift rather than some lewd object. How could they view her as anything but, with her pliant slenderness and evocative eyes? A fresh thrill runs through Rivoche at the knowledge of what will transpire once they are alone, though it is quickly doused by the circumstances at hand.

 

Tarkin lies motionless beside her, his upturned face as smooth as a funeral effigy. He has been her guardian, her confidant, her closest ally even before her parents were ripped from her. ‘Huff-Huff’, she’d called him then, always crying for his attention, for another tale of his heroism upon the land she now rests her cheek upon. Rivoche runs her thumb along the setting of the ring he’d presented her at birth, the river pearls it holds as smooth and flawless as ever. Her name itself was chosen to honor them, shaped by the care of the creature that protects them, yet prized for their own worth once they have been parted from it.

 

A veermok’s distant howl startles Tarkin into wakefulness, and so Rivoche shifts to her other side, trusting herself enough now to imagine the panther lilies that will decorate the pavilion, marbled white and black and orange just as the one she’d tucked behind Jyn’s ear before proposing had been, hundreds sacrificed to ensure that their union will be a loving one. Jyn will sway towards her in two days, kneeling with her at the feet of The Victorious—her ancestor Jave, whose bravery and wit granted her the right to take a bride and whose influence has allowed Rivoche to do the same.

 

Rivoche’s grip tightens upon Jyn’s pendant.  She closes her eyes, focusing until all she can see are the inviting swells of Jyn's cheeks and chin, her rounded fairness so different from the angular curves of Rivoche’s own features. Once wedded, they will be as two river pearls nestled together, their natural variation complementing one another, harmonious, lustrous—no matter what setting they are fitted to.

 

 

+

The second morning of Rivoche’s hunt dawns with a cold rain, spurring the party into near-immediate activity. They walk atop the crest of the canyon, a flat, arid expanse of plains that serves as a respite before their descend into the valley at the foot of Mount Veermok.

 

“Aunt Meri had a panther’s fur, didn’t she?” Sidvan asks her after an hour or so, his voice muffled by the shaak jerky he’s chewing.

 

“Yes,” Rivoche replies tersely. They’ve never been close, and the sight of the spots and patchy hair on his chin makes her smile briefly—payback when he’d teased her about the tissues that poked out of her gown the last time they’d met.

 

Sidvin, to his credit, takes her disdain in stride, allowing Rivoche to pass him so that she can walk beside Tarkin instead. She looks down, wary of snakes, and catches sight of Jyn’s pendant where it lies between her breasts. In the unsteady light, she can read an inscription on one side: “Trust in the Force.”

 

“So, what’s Jyn’s fur going to be from?” he calls out, Reve chuckling beside him.

 

“I’ll know it when we come across it,” Rivoche says without turning to face them. “We’ll be in the valley soon, and then we’ll plan for the night’s hunt.”

 

The cave bear appears on the horizon without preamble, a massive, dull shape that makes Rivoche’s chest ache with fear. It should not be this far out upon the plains, where little beyond brush and rodents are to be found.

 

“I think we just came across it,” Sidvin says without enthusiasm, falling back behind his father.  Rivoche looks to Tarkin, who continues to march towards it, though he does look meaningfully at Rivoche, awaiting her judgement.

 

Rivoche’s back stiffens with each step they take towards the animal. It is walking perpendicular to them, and while its gait is steady, its age shows in its speed. It has wandered upon their path as if it was a gift from the plateau itself to Rivoche, as unexpected as Jyn’s own entrance into her life.

 

The pendant is heavy against Rivoche’s chest.

 

_Is this the work of the Force?_

 

The Rodian says something that Rivoche, in her frozen terror, cannot make out. The animal is huge even at this distance, easily her height at its shoulder. She digs through her pack, unknowingly tearing off Jyn’s pendant in her haste to get her scope out, nearly screaming when Tarkin approaches her from behind to hand her the blaster and trident.

 

“Decide quickly,” Tarkin whispers, commanding and calm. “Victory does not favor the hesitant.”

 

Rivoche steadies her hands, unwilling to think of what hesitation could cost her. When she looks at it again through her scope, she notes that the bear seems to still be ignorant of their presence, its eyes as milky as old ice.

 

“It’s sick, Uncle Wil,” she says. “I think it’s blind.”

 

“Then cull it. Your father would have considered it an act of compassion.”

 

_Trust in the Force_

 

A fury awakens inside Rivoche, an ugly need that propels her forward, shooting wildly at the bear’s upturned neck and head, wailing as though she is the one being mauled. In the time that it takes her for her to reach her kill and the bear to fall to its side, Rivoche has tossed the blaster to the ground, her world narrowing to the trident she clutches.

 

Tarkin lays a hand upon Rivoche’s shoulder some interminable time later, the bear’s head and face now unrecognizable as anything once living. “You’ll ruin the pelt.”

 

“What a kill!” Sid hollers, gripping her shaking shoulder.

 

“Elegantly done,” Uncle Reve says without sincerity, pushing his son aside while he unfurls the toolkit, drawing out a skinning knife for her. “The pelt, at least, should preserve beautifully.”

 

“Cape it quickly and mount the remains on the carrying poles. We will dress it tonight and preserve the flesh over the fire.”

 

The Rodian is charged with carrying the meat, while Tarkin dislodges the head and tosses it aside. The sickening thump causes Rivoche to finally look up from the bear’s mutilated figure, distorted more with each slip of her knife. She brushes her fingers against its claws, feeling Jyn’s rosy nails instead.

 

“Make the proper incisions before you continue with the skinning. Wrists, legs, groin, breast, and belly.”

 

Rivoche looks around frantically, thankful when Tarkin approaches her, Jyn’s pendant in hand. He slips it around her neck, snuffing out her panic as quickly as it had been ignited.

 

“You’ve done well, my girl.”

 

 

+

There is no beauty in the receding plateau, no poetry in the rain that soaks Rivoche once they descend from the plains, cleaning the blood from her. Even the terror of a veermok sighted on a ledge above them at nightfall is lost in her haste to return to the compound. Rivoche does not complain at the pace her uncle sets, eager to return to Jyn and escape the guilt that plagues her every silent moment.

 

_The pelt is mine by right. I overpowered the cave bear. I earned it._

 

Rivoche knows that pride should be her instinct whenever she looks over at the drying pelt Sidvin and Reve carry between them, that her guilt is too misplaced to voice. She is the first to turn in once they reach the familiar alcove, her exhausted body overtaking her horrified thoughts.

 

The shuttle ride back to the compound is a similar jumble in her mind, a time to sleep without consciously deciding to do so before the flurry of washing that commences as soon as she is back. Her skin is too deep to tan in the way her uncle’s does, but Rivoche decides that it has a warmer glow to it after these days away, her cheeks reddened slightly above brightened eyes. She can smell the meat of the cave bear cooking in the kitchen beneath her, the troublesome pelt lain out for the guests arriving to scrutinize.

 

The process of styling her hair has always allowed Rivoche time to quiet her mind into nothing more than the play of her fingers across her scalp, the methodical twisting and braiding as close to a Jedi’s meditative state as she decides that she will ever reach. She is naked still, watching each strand weave together as though another were doing so. The thought of doing the same to her own child makes her eyes sting, filling her with bitterness that her mother is little more than the holoportrait in her pack. With a final pin to steady the tower of braids, she rises to dress.

 

R5 breaks her concentration, letting out a series of disgruntled beeps when a stocking and undershirt fall upon her from where they hang against the door.

 

“Well, then go wait for me outside somewhere!”

 

By the time Rivoche has laced herself into the underskirt, bodice, and sleeves cut to the approximation of her size by the bridal party, she can hear the guests making their way to where she will greet them. She squares her shoulders, threading through the hallways until she has reached the main corridor.

 

“You’re back!”

 

Jyn has snuck up behind her, a flurry of tissue-thin white fabric and bared limbs. Her hair is decorated in a crown of panther lilies, the short wisps curled and mussed. Far from the cowering young woman Krennic had left her three days ago, Jyn has emerged victorious, carrying a sense of self in this wild, pampered creature. Rivoche cannot even frown at the breach of a tradition nearly sacred in its observance. Jyn is here, too warm and soft and eager and _alive_ for protocol and whispered omens to matter, especially when she is kissing Rivoche so ravenously.

 

 _It is instinct_ , Rivoche thinks fiercely as she pushes her into an alcove. A bodily knowledge that Jyn in her arms, dressed to pledge herself to her, is the true order of the galaxy.

 

Jyn pulls away reluctantly at the sound of R5 rolling towards them, erupting in a flurry of chirps.

 

“I wanted to see you before the ceremony,” Jyn says breathlessly, smoothing her hair and re-arranging her gauze wraps. “R5 agreed to distract the bridal party so long as she could follow behind us in the procession.”

 

Rivoche grins wickedly. “Uncle Wil can’t stop the ceremony if he doesn’t see her!”

 

Jyn winks, playfully guiding Rivoche’s hands against her hips. “She deserves to be there as much as any of them.”

 

“My rebel bride,” Rivoche whispers lowly into her ear, ignoring the ever-approaching tittering of her cousins and aunts down the hall.

 

Jyn shudders beneath her, pulling away. “We shouldn’t joke about such things.”

 

Rivoche does not grant Jyn’s words a second thought, watching as she races back towards her approaching bridal party, R5 at her heels.

 

“Anilese, the droid found her! And just before she would’ve run into her wife!”

 

There is nothing else for Rivoche to do but to walk to the stairhead and begin her descent, her canyon cherry soap mingling with Jyn’s scents of lily water and rose oil until Rivoche is freshly eager to have her alone once more. She sees her uncle at the foot of the stairs, Reve and Sidvin beside him. He holds the ancestral robe out for her to slip through and tie, olive and grey and steely blue patterns woven into the patterns of the wilderness she has conquered.

 

Tarkin takes the headdress from Sid and affixes it to Rivoche’s braids quickly, pausing for a moment afterwards to clasp her hand and kiss her ring.

 

“My dear, there is none other I would bestow Eriadu to.”

 

Rivoche shudders, closing her eyes and nodding with all the composure she can muster. She wants to sob into her uncle’s chest with gratitude, to tell him that she’ll allow nothing to disgrace his trust in her.

 

Tarkin turns to face the crowd behind them while Reve hands Rivoche the bridal fur.

 

“Now, let us proceed to The Victorious.”

 

Rivoche, mindful now of the starched robe, leads the procession out of the compound proper and into the gardens, still overgrown despite the efforts of the servants. Tarkin matches her strides, silent and steady beside her, his uniform a stark reminder of the galaxy beyond. The twilight stretches brilliantly out in front of them, encircling them in the chill of the evening as they approach the pavilion she’d toddled in as a child and solemnly observed as a teenager while he had outlined the proceedings that would lead her to this moment.

 

“Be seated.”

 

Rivoche sets the pelt at her feet, gazing up at the monument while they wait for Jyn’s bridal party to approach. No detail of Jave’s struggle is omitted—her severed right arm, a missing tooth, the healthy pelt of the cave bear slain for her own bride—all of it making Rivoche question anew whether her own pelt is truly honorable. She closes her eyes at the sound of the bridal flutes, waiting until Tarkin touches her hand and permits her to look upon her bride.

 

“Rivoche Tarkin,” he begins before Jyn can lean over to whisper to her, “you stand before this symbol of our family’s resilience, having proven that you are worthy of sustaining it. Through this union, you will become the head of the Tarkin family on Eriadu. Do you accept the weight of this honor?”

 

“I am proud to bear it.”

 

Tarkin’s face remains expressionless, though his eyes are warm.

 

“And do you swear to observe the sanctity of wifehood, above your own life and those of all aside from your bride and your children?”

 

“I do swear,” Rivoche finishes, her voice rough with a determination that she recognizes once again as instinct. _The natural way of the galaxy_.

 

Rivoche clasps Jyn’s hands tightly, watching as the stars emerge in the darkened sky behind her, their numbers heralding a fruitful union.

 

“Jyn Erso. You stand before this symbol of the Tarkin family’s resilience, having proven to its heir that you are worthy of joining in its glory. Through this union, you will become the bearer and protector of the next generation of our family. Do you accept the weight of this honor?

 

Rivoche nearly gasps at the fierce certainty in Jyn’s eyes.

 

“I do swear.”

 

“And do you swear to observe the sanctity of bridehood, above your own life and those of all aside from your wife and your children?”

 

“I do swear,” Jyn says once more, her eyes flickering out upon the crowd, as though Galen Erso could have appeared among them.

 

 _I will reunite them, even if I must kill Krennic myself to do so_ , Rivoche vows in the silent moment as Jyn kneels before her upon the spread of flowers. _I do swear_.

 

“The pelt of a cave bear, honorably killed upon the Carrion Plateau. May it warm and protect you as your wife has sworn to.”

 

Rivoche drapes the pelt over Jyn, who looks grateful for the warmth and coverage it provides. They gaze upon one another, Jyn’s hands warm and soft in hers.

 

Tarkin rests his hand upon Rivoche’s shoulder, guiding her downwards until she, too, kneels on the lily-covered stone.

 

“Wife and bride, rise before me as one.”

 

Tarkin unclasps their hands and raises them up, the sun finally setting behind them, the crowd clapping and cheering and wandering back towards the main compound for their feast. But Rivoche cares for none of it, as there is only the warm, perfect press of Jyn’s body against hers once again, the thrill of the future blinding her to all else.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Thank you endlessly for coming with me on the journey of this fic. I truly can’t express how much Rivoche, the Tarkins, and this entire AU mean to me. Cellolo (@baethoven) is really the midwife of this fic, and I’d like to especially thank her.  
> -This fic was the planned first installment to a trilogy of fics that would go on to detail Jyn and Rivoche’s marriage, defection from the Empire, and involvement with the Rebellion.   
> -The "Sovereign" is Tarkin’s flagship in Rebels.   
> -“Coffin jockey” is the term other Imperials used to describe TIE pilots, at least according to Wookieepedia.   
> -The Aurebesh on Jyn’s kyber crystal really does translate to “Trust in the Force”!


End file.
